Here is another oil (11 x 14) painted on location during our recent trip to California. The mountainous area of the Los Padres National Forest north of Ojai was not my intended painting destination — the sunny coast. Instead, I wound up navigating switchbacks of the misty coastal range to the highest point along this stretch of highway. A creeping overcast sky and chilly autumn breeze were not what I expected on our trip to Beach Boys country. Weather like this might have been enough to stifle my creative urge if it hadn't been for the spectacular view.
During the time I spent painting at the pullout, the moody stillness was only rarely punctuated by a car far below, soon out of sight and then abruptly in my near space. There was also the seasoned cyclist who stopped to talk for a moment. He was completing his second trip of the day cycling up and down the mountain. I would still be there for his third and final time — his wife waiting to pick him up in the car just up the road. I would've been amazed had he been a younger man doing this sort of thing. He told me it was a regular routine for him. I, standing in one place for the duration with freezing hands, felt somehow shamed.
"The mountains look different every time I am up here," he said. Probably so, but my memory of them will always be the mood of misty timelessness and space between places that are near, yet far.
